On one hand it's old politics - digging up the dirt on your opponent. But it is also part of something new - and much bigger than just politics. Throughout the western world new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record and monitor the present - and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations, and from that find ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same.

To bring this system into focus I want to tell the history of its rise, and its strange roots - the bastard love-child of snooping and high-level mathematical theory.

Yes--he mentions 9/11 only to peddle the official canard that US security 'dropped the ball' leading up to the attacks. He even implies (at least that's what I got from him) that all this spying and data-mining by the government is basically justified by the need to find and stop terrorists. He keeps saying that, 'It's not Big Brother,' that government spies are doing their best to serve us and are not out to oppress us. And that where big business is concerned, 'It's all about money,' it's our eyeballs and ultimately our cash that they want. As if political tyranny and big business interests don't routinely reinforce each other. Ultimately, he argues that if people don't want so much of their personal information collected, it's their own fault for putting so much out there. I do often find people ridiculous in their apparent lack of concern for safeguarding personal information. But then again, one could argue that we've been lured into digital media to the point that it's become a whole interconnected way of life--without having had any real say in the rules governing these technologies (I mean something more substantial than those 'Terms of Use' 'agreements'). In any case, even if it is their (our) fault for not being more vigilant, his take on the workings of power does sound naïve, unfortunately.